The Retail Revolution

© 2016 Bamboo Rose. All Rights Reserved 1

The B2B retail revolution:

A Bamboo Rose Whitepaper

Rethinking how brands create & shop for products

It’s a stark contrast between the way consumers shop and the way retail product teams shop for materials and goods with their suppliers.The reality is that the way we create and shop for products in the B2B

space is not fast enough to support the new ways that consumers

discover and buy them. That disconnect needs to change.

TO COMPETE IN THIS NEW RETAIL ECONOMY, RETAILERS NEED TO

IMPROVE THEIR BACKEND TECHNOLOGY AND PROCESSES TO BRING MORE

INNOVATIVE PRODUCTS TO MARKET, FAST ENOUGH AND AT THE BEST PRICE.

The Retail Revolution

© 2016 Bamboo Rose. All Rights Reserved 2

We’ve come a long way from the era of casual, leisurely

shopping. The promise between brand and customer

has changed, for customer expectations are high.

Customers demand that the products they want be

available when they want and through the channel of

their choice. Additionally, consumers are relying more

heavily on their communities to power their purchase

decisions. In fact, 67 percent of consumers say they

are influenced by reviews1, meaning that even one

negative individual voice could prevent a purchase.

Traditional retailers may feel they have little chance

against newer players like Amazon, but they don’t

have to accept the media’s claim of their death as

inevitable. With the right investments and smart

innovation, companies can thrive and have a robust

future in the New Retail Economy.

CHANGING THE WAY RETAILERS SHOP

The digital revolution has put the consumer in a

position of power like never before. Consumers

today are no longer beholden to the information

that retailers provide; instead, they have the ability to

conduct their own research and come to a purchasing

decision better informed than in decades past. The

empowered consumer can choose what to buy on

the basis of price, quality, customer reviews, ethical

sourcing and environmentalism and endless other

criteria that brands must consider.

It’s a stark contrast between the way consumers shop

and the way retail product teams shop for materials

and good with their suppliers. Brands are investing

millions in tech to create a better digital customer

experience, while the product backend shopping

process is lightyears behind. Consumers get highly

visual, interactive ways to find items, while employees

at brands who are looking for products must take

multiple overseas trips, dig through warehouses and

try to organize everything in spreadsheets.

Consider the typical product purchase process today:

You visit a friend’s home and fall in love with a new

purple lamp she’s bought. You’d also like a similar

lamp, so you begin by Googling “purple lamp”

on your mobile phone. You pin a few photos of ones

you like best to your Home Décor Pinterest board.

The next day at work, you forget whether your friend’s

lamp had a pull chain or a switch, so you send her

a quick Facebook message to confirm. While on

lunch break, you peruse your pinned choices on your

desktop, select your favorite, then switch over to

Amazon.com to find the best price. And as luck would

have it, your favorite one also happens to be one of

the lowest priced options. A few clicks later, your

fancy new purple lamp is on its way to your doorstep,

in just two days.

Compare that to how brands create that same

lamp. The idea for purple as an in-season color

may come from a tradeshow, a runway or even a

tinted leaf – any number of sources could prompt

inspiration. A designer makes a mental note of the

color idea, and if she remembers the color or where

she made note of it, she sends it along via email

to her team. Meanwhile, a sourcing director is in a

Chinese warehouse, checking out dozens of different

options for housewares, taking handwritten notes

and snapping photos of various options. She wasn’t

on the email thread with the designer’s note on

purple as the “in” color, so she instead just picks her

favorite—blue. Later that night, she spends hours in

a hotel room sorting through photos (with filenames

like “87375.jpg”) and matching them to her notes,

eventually sending a late night email with several

attached spreadsheets comparing costs and styles to

her colleagues, asking for their opinions.

Traditional retail is dead and consumers just don’t like shopping. Is the

media right? On any given morning, a glance at your newsfeed will likely

include some variation on these themes. The media has long opined on

the impending death of the traditional retail model. And it’s not completely

unfounded: Consumers are spending, but on their own terms.

The Retail Revolution

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1 Shop like a consumer. Shop across supplier

communities virtually. You should be able to

buy at work like you buy in your free time with

a platform that can easily translate to the end

customer experience. You wouldn’t want your

consumers shopping via Excel, right? Look for

virtual marketplace tools that keep the process

highly visual and automate as many of the details

as possible. Get a holistic view of the different

parties you work with, what’s available and what the

related costs are in real-time, so you can quickly

weigh your options and make smarter decisions. By

shopping virtually across the supplier community,

you can reduce sampling time and costs because

you have narrowed down your selections early.

2 Rely on the power of the community. Social

proof isn’t just for consumers. Retailers have vast

communities of individuals they could potentially

work with to help drive innovative products to

market more efficiently. Using collaborative tools

to engage directly with designers, suppliers,

franchisees and more helps you stay on top of

the latest trends and create more opportunities for

inspiration. And use the community to compare

and contrast offerings across multiple suppliers

and vendors.

3 Use mobile tools. Forget sticky notes and

spreadsheets. Consumers love shopping on their

phones and why shouldn’t retail buyers do the

same? Seek out apps and other mobile tools to

help you document and share the ideas you find

with your peers instantly while on the go.

4 Discover your options in real-time. Don’t wait for

responses to emails or for someone to dig through

a stack of papers to find a price option for you.

There’s no need to get stuck in the weeds every

single time something needs to change. Optimize

your buying and negotiation processes by looking

for a tool that not only enables a collaborative

environment but also automates the process of

comparing prices and finding alternate suppliers.

1Hinckley, Dan, New study: Data reveals 67% of consumers are influenced by online reviews.,” Moz, Sept. 2, 2015.

https://moz.com/blog/new-data-reveals-67-of-consumers-are-influenced-by-online-reviews

The reality is that the way we create and shop for products in the B2B space

is not fast enough to support the new ways that consumers discover and buy

them. That disconnect needs to change.

MIMICKING THE CONSUMER EXPERIENCE

Retailers need to keep up with this New Retail Economy by turning their backend retail shopping process into a

more visual, collaborative experience in order to bring more innovative products to market faster. Consumers don’t

shop in a linear way, so we can’t rely on creating products for them in that way. To compete in this New Retail

Economy, retailers can improve their backend technology and processes by doing the following:

CONCLUSIONConsumers have control, with more choice, higher expectations and more power than ever before when it comes

to retail purchases. The B2B, product development backend needs this same control and access to choice. Brands

that do not take advantage of the new technologies that allow this will be in danger of falling behind – lagging in

their ability to bring innovative products to market, fast enough and at the best price. Brands and suppliers have a

huge opportunity in this New Retail Economy – they just need to invest in the right areas.

Consumers expect new and interesting products, and they want them to be available 24/7 in different channels.

To succeed, you need to match the speed of the consumer, and that starts by aligning your backend processes to

your frontend customer experience. Shop like your customers do by creating a more visual and efficient buying

experience throughout the entire retail ecosystem, and help you thrive in today’s market.